He's so lifelike
by 898700
Summary: In a world where artificial life is the norm and humanity has almost disappeared, being life-like might not be a good thing.


It was a cold, frigid night, way darker than he felt comfortable with. The fact that he had been travelling the sewerage system for the last forty five minutes didn't help, the rancid stench clinging to his skin and nostrils. It had been even more foul-smelling a hundred years ago, ten years, last year, so much he knew. But somehow, he sarcastically thought, it didn't make him feel any better.

Maybe if he were to return in another hundred years, then he would have enough reason to be thankful for. But then, it wasn't as if he realistically had the time to spare. He already had, in fact, waited twelve days longer than he would have preferred, despite knowing just too well that having this reunion after such a short notice was as close a miracle as he'd ever get.

One he would have wanted to experience elsewhere.

"They won't find us here."

Startled, he slipped, barely able to keep his balance by placing a hand on the slimy walls.

Gross.

"_I_ wouldn't think of looking for myself here," he admitted, disgust way too clear in his voice while he wondered how to wipe his hand without making more of a mess of his already dreadful state. It wasn't as if the liquid that passed for water and should more honestly be called sludge was particularly clean at these particular locations, after all.

"Which makes this spot just perfect."

The smile in the other man's voice became visible when a light flickered into existence. With a groan, Spencer looked at his soiled hand, bitterly wishing he still had the excuse of darkness to hide it. "Because I'm a prickly wimp that can't stand a little dirt," he deadpanned, knowing painfully well that he truly had something of a problem when it came to germs. Nothing as terrible as he made others believe, thankfully. He would have been full into mental meltdown by now otherwise.

A handkerchief, probably white but tinted amber under the artificial light, appeared in his line of sight. Intricately detailed initials, a J and G, promptly disappeared under the brown and green substance that still marred his hand but thankfully didn't cake it anymore.

Ugh, his nails.

"You don't look so good," Gideon said, obviously having taken the time to look closely at him.

Well, _thank you_, he sarcastically, and inwardly, retorted. "Not my best days," he offered, short and dry.

Gideon's eyebrow was, if he'd ever learn to read the man, an invitation to explain himself.

"Prentiss made a comment two weeks ago," he said instead. The faster they went over what brought him there, the better. "It … worries me."

Talk about an understatement.

Gideon's eyebrow remained where it was, not helping at all to quench the desire to call him a bastard. Goddess, when had he gotten so bitter and sour?

"I was talking to the team about a code I'd just broken," he started, pausing to wonder whether to further explain about the case and immediately deciding against it. It wasn't important, although he knew Gideon would probably prefer to have all the facts; but what really mattered was what came after, and as far as he could say, it only related tangentially, if at all, to the UNSUB they were following at the time. "When I paused, Prentiss touched my cheek and said, and I quote, 'It's so life-like'."

Gideon's face went instantly blank, then searching. Spencer knew he was being inspected, every little nuance of his conduct observed and cataloged by the most ruthless behavioral analyst he had ever known.

He wished for a little _drip-drip_ background sound, anything, no matter how movie like or cheesy it was.

_Or maybe not_, he thought while taking a little step to the front and frantically looking around in response to a fleeting squeak. After all, rats had proven to have more resiliency than human beings.

"Where exactly did she touch you?"

And yes, _that_ was the part that made him cold with fear when he would have otherwise been just vaguely irritated while at the same time warmly amused.

He nodded, unable to say the words but knowing full well he would be understood.

Gideon closed the distance, two steps, looking at him directly in the eye before softly brushing his thumb over exactly the same spot Emily's index finger has touched thirteen days, eight hours - no, nine hours? He shouldn't have left his chronos behind, but then, he usually didn't need them. Nonetheless, the distortion his senses had been subjected to in the present circumstances had wacked all notion of time out of him, his perception of location barely hanging on with pins.

He had to close his eyes when Gideon's hand returned to his head, the thumb on the hollow of his cheek, the remaining fingers splattered to other four predefined points of his skull. The position was oddly intimate, and he couldn't help the rabid and utterly embarrassing flush from spreading, even while knowing that his former mentor was simply demonstrating what Spencer already knew, no further motivations or hidden agendas behind the act.

Taking a step back was easy; returning his attention to Gideon was not.

"It was just a joke," he declared weakly, not truly believing his own words yet too used to play Devil's Advocate to react any differently.

To his surprise, Gideon agreed. "It wouldn't have worked with you."

Spencer blinked. In just six words, Gideon had managed to resume the internal debate that had been going over and over his head, the reason why he felt he _could_ be overreacting.

Fact: the finger-palm-press motion only worked with mechadroids and all but the most recent cyborg models, as it was designed to give the maintenance technicians access to the subject' central mainframe.

Fact: as far as the BAU and the government at large knew, Dr. Spencer Reid was one of the most complex biological androids in existence, and a very experimental model at that. That he also was the very first second-gen synthbot to successfully survive its birth made everybody willing to overlook his programming's obvious deviances from the norm … which explained why his quirks and obviously inhuman intelligence hadn't landed him in the law prescribed wipe-clean-and-reprogram subroutine.

So no, the finger-palm-press wouldn't have worked, because there wasn't a single mechanical part on him. No clockwork machinery, no hardware as the term was originally intended. Even the nanobots that swam on his bloodstream were wholly organic, although the biodocs only allowed them to remain symbiotically functional because they didn't seem to cause any damage, and there wasn't a way to predict what'd happen to him were they to be removed.

And wasn't it rich that he, Spencer Reid, the least human-like among the posthuman population, the inspiration that kept the evoludesigners working until they finally achieved a now ever growing string of successful wholly biological models capable of reproducing without external technical intervention - wasn't it rich that he was actually human?

_Fully human_, had been Gideon's exact words. For some reason, they had always felt like a lie to Spencer.

Completely or only partially human, the fact was that he had spent all of his life posturing as a posthuman in a posthuman society that felt nothing but contempt for their human ancestors. There was no way he would have survived so long if he were anything but perfect.

Thus, the whole freaking out at Emily's actions.

"I like them," he admitted in half a voice, and _that_ was what bothered him most. Emily was a good profiler, but Derek, Hotch and Rossi were even better, if only because they had had more experience. So if she knew, they did; and knowing Derek, if he had had even the slightest suspicion, then Penelope was definitely involved too, only possibly leaving JJ in the dark.

JJ, who had asked him to hold little Henry shortly after the first-gen synthbot baby had been harvested from his biotank.

JJ, who would have to be summarily executed along with all of her little family, BAU included, if she failed to report the presence of a human not only moving outside of the human-designated areas, but also deeply involved in posthuman-exclusive activities.

"It's not a sin to care about others," Gideon's soft voice responded.

For some reason, that felt even more of a lie.


End file.
